EP290: Jessica Hearsey - How to Build a Bookkeeping Business, Not a Job

Michael Palmer: As business owners know, accounting and the numbers and what's happening tell a story. And it's one of the primary things that can help you go from, you know, running a business that's barely making it by to a successful business that's providing for the owners and providing good jobs for dedicated employees. You're listening to The Successful Bookkeeper with With your host, Michael Palmer, listen each week as inspiring guests share their secrets of success to help you increase your confidence, work smarter, and build a business you love. This episode of The Successful Bookkeeper is brought to you by purebookkeeping.com, the proven system to grow your bookkeeping business. Welcome back to The Successful Bookkeeper Podcast. I am your host, Michael Palmer, and today's show is going to be a fantastic one. Our guest is the owner of Altitude Accounting, and she is an Accelerate to Advisor member and a Pure Bookkeeping licensee, Jessica Hersey. Welcome to the show. Thanks so much, Michael. Thanks for having me today. It's great to have you. And I always love these interviews where we get to hear the business journey, where you started, where you, what you went through and where you are now today, as well as where the heck you're going. And so let's maybe go from there. Tell us a little bit about your career journey leading up until this point.

Jessica Hearsey: Yeah, absolutely. So I'm from rural Alberta, small town, and both of my parents were entrepreneurs. And I saw how hard they worked and how many long hours and weekends they worked. And I always thought to myself, you know, I don't think that's for me. So I went to university, got a degree in international business because I love to travel and I figured, well, with an international business degree, I could just travel the world and climb the corporate ladder and that would be fun and wonderful. Of course, that's not really the way it works. You know, once you get a degree, you're still just kid with no experience and a piece of paper on your wall. So, I got my first job as an accounting tech. And I loved the work. I loved accounting. I loved the numbers. I loved getting everything in the right place. The challenge was that the accountant that I worked for didn't really provide a lot of clarity as to you know, the vision of the business or if I was doing a good job or not. So I found that really challenging because I'm, you know, a driven person who wants to get better and wants to be a good